As prepared for delivery
Press briefing teleconference on Keystone XL
Cindy Schild, API manager of downstream and industry operations
December 4, 2012
Opening statement:
Good morning, everyone. Thanks for calling in.
Very soon the state of Nebraska could approve a new route for the Keystone XL pipeline, which means that virtually all of the boxes for the project will have been checked. All that will be left then will be for President Obama to decide whether the project – now in its fifth year of review and planned to be among the safest ever built – is in our national interest.
The Keystone XL pipeline clearly is in America’s interest, and we urge the president to give it a green light as soon as possible.
Approving the pipeline will support the President’s effort to create American jobs.
Approving the pipeline will help get our economy back on track.
Approving the pipeline will help us build a stronger energy future.
The full Keystone XL pipeline is a $7 billion infrastructure project that will travel across five states. Building it in full will mean 20,000 new, good-paying jobs, including jobs in transportation, manufacturing, and the building trades, which are suffering from nearly 12 percent unemployment. There will also be permanent jobs created for operating and maintaining the pipeline. Oil sands development linked to Keystone XL could also support more than 100,000 jobs by 2035 according to the Canadian Energy Research Institute.
And in the longer term, oil sands development broadly will provide a major ongoing, job-creating stimulus to our entire economy as the dollars we spend for Canada’s oil are returned to us in purchases of American goods and services. Nearly 90 cents of every dollar we spend in Canada are turned around and spent by Canadians here in the U.S.
This project is state of the art. The State Department has conducted three separate and comprehensive environmental reviews, providing ample opportunity for public input and has not found issues of environmental concern. TransCanada has agreed to 57 special conditions to further enhance the safety of the pipeline.
Let’s also not forget, the crude arriving from Canada will be processed in American refineries – some of the cleanest, most efficient refineries in the world – which have each invested billions to be able to process heavier crudes such as those coming from Canada.
Americans understand that approving Keystone XL is the right thing to do for our economy and energy security. Public opinion polls – including recent polls from Rasmussen and the Washington Post – consistently show Americans believe the pipeline is a good idea.
In our own Election Day polling, three-fourths of voters supported building the pipeline, including majorities of Republicans, Independents and Democrats.
For most people, building the pipeline is common sense. We will need more oil just as we will need more jobs. While use of renewables will expand, oil will remain critical to our nation’s energy equation for decades to come. By the administration’s own estimates, oil and natural gas will continue to provide most of the energy we need to fuel our country for decades.
A decision to approve the pipeline is a rational way to help plan for this. It could help reduce our dependency on oil from less stable parts of the world and contribute to achieving self-sufficiency in transportation fuels in as few as 12 years.
Canada has the third largest oil reserves in the world. The pipeline connects us to more of those supplies. It also will help move our own growing production in North Dakota to American markets.
The chief economist of the International Energy Agency recently said there will be demand for [quote] “every drop of growing production in Canada’s oil sands.” His organization projects that oil sands production will grow from 1.6 million barrels per day last year to 4.3 million by 2035. The Keystone XL pipeline would help ensure that America is the principal consumer of that growing production.
This issue is not complicated. It’s easy. The president can and should approve the Keystone XL pipeline. Most Americans and bipartisan majorities in Congress support it, and our nation needs the jobs and energy.
Thanks, and now John Kerekes will talk about what is happening in Nebraska to help move this project forward.